A large and increasing portion of the information handled in today's modern office environment is digital. Many organizations, institutions and establishments store, handle and manipulate most of their information, and/or information associated with their activities, in digital forms. In many cases, such information may include confidential, secret or otherwise sensitive information, which, in the wrong hands, may cause serious damage to the owner or keeper of the information and/or to those associated with the owner and/or keeper of the information.
Uncontrolled information flow, also, is a recognized problem in various industries, organizations and environments. For example, commercial organizations, government agencies, academic institutions and health care facilities may all be at risk of sensitive information being provided to unauthorized, possibly hostile entities.
Much attention has been devoted to devising methods for preventing sensitive information from being copied to, or stored on, removable or other devices. Other counter measures attempt to prevent sensitive information from being communicated, for example, over the internet, or otherwise conveyed, provided or exposed to unauthorized entities. However, one drawback of prior art methods is that they rely, at least to some extent, on an operating system environment. A user may use an alternative, possibly privately owned, operating system to operate a computer and thus possibly bypass security measures that rely on an operating system environment.